Imagine decorating your bedroom walls with paper
made from the same solar cells that now power
your home. That is now the tantalising possibility
thrown up by the development of lightweight solar
cells that can be printed on paper and still conduct
electricity. Researchers at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology printed them on untreated
copy paper using a technique that could help slash
the cost of producing solar cells.

Solar Street Lamps Feed Energy
to the Grid

The humble street light is joining the ranks of wind turbines
and solar power plants in supplying renewable energy to
the electricity grid. A street lamp covered in photovoltaic
cells, which can generate more energy from sunlight than
it consumes to light the street, is being tested in the United
Kingdom. And the lamp is already supplying electricity to the
National Grid. The SunMast, developed by Scotia, based in
Aarhus, Denmark, generates electricity from sunlight during
the day, which it supplies to the grid. It then simply draws
electricity back from the grid at night to power its light.

Bringing Forests to the Desert

It may sound like an environmentalist’s pipe dream,
but giant greenhouses could soon be popping up in
some of the world’s deserts, producing fresh drinking
water, food and fuel. The Sahara Forest Project, which
aims to create green oases in desert areas, has signed a
deal to build a pilot plant in Aqaba, near the Red Sea in
Jordan. With funding from the Norwegian government,
the team plans to begin building the pilot plant on a
200,000 square metre site in 2012.

Air battery for electric cars

One of the biggest drawbacks with owning an electric
vehicle (EV) is range anxiety, or a fear that the battery
charge will not get them to their destination. Standard
electric vehicles use lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which
are bulky and rarely provide 160 kilometres (100 miles) of
driving before they run out. Now IBM claims to have solved
a fundamental problem that may lead to the creation of
a battery with an 800-kilometre (500-mile) range – letting
electric cars compete with the gas guzzlers. Known as a
lithium-air cell, it has theoretical energy densities more
than 1,000 times greater than the Li-ion type. Several
research prototypes have already been demonstrated and
as part of Battery 500, an IBM-led coalition involving four
US national laboratories and commercial partners, plan to
have a full-scale prototype ready by 2013, with commercial
batteries to follow by around 2020.